


Odds Are (We’re Gonna Be Alright)

by albuscarfypotter



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1486927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/albuscarfypotter/pseuds/albuscarfypotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael is really going to miss 636</p>
            </blockquote>





	Odds Are (We’re Gonna Be Alright)

**Author's Note:**

> Named for the Barenaked Ladies song “Odds Are”. This is pretty self-indulgent. Basically my own sad feelings about the new office as expressed by Michael. Obviously a lot of artistic license was taken with the new office layout as I have no idea what it’s going to look like.

**Monday**

It was just a building, Michael reminded himself as he forcibly directed the car past the usual turning, so ingrained in his psyche that he his hand had been halfway to the turning signal before he remembered. And not even that great a building. It had been impractical and cramped. A labyrinth of rooms that connected at odd places, a building in two halves that meant you had to cross the car park if you wanted to use the microwave. The AH office was an overcrowded mess of machines and bodies that reached alarming temperatures in the warm weather and meant you couldn’t walk two steps with treading on something or someone. Half the team had even been in a separate location, several doors down. And yet. It had been home.

 

Michael pulled into the car park of the new studio, regarding it with passive distrust. He didn’t have to remember to jump the wobbly paving stone on the way up the path, or to hip check the door on the way in as it had a habit of swinging suddenly and alarmingly closed at the least notice. He didn’t get a bubbly morning greeting either, just a wall of noise as a huge swarm of people tried to sort out whose boxes were whose and what went wear.

“Michael” Geoff hailed him and waved him over. “Grab a box, buddy. We gotta lot to do today.” Michael looked at the mess of boxes at Geoff’s feet and eventually spotted one with green masking tape pasted across it. The green ones were supposed to be Achievement Hunter but there was really no guarantee. There could just as easily be kitchen utensils in the box. Geoff weaved his way through the mess of people and cardboard down a narrow corridor, a few twisting turns and through another set of doors into a large room.

He supposed there was nothing really wrong with it. It was certainly capable of fitting their entire team inside it along with a few new people if they so desired. But without any of their personal affects or furniture, the room seemed grey and unwelcoming. Geoff tried the light switch and a bare light bulb flickered into life, casting the room into even more stark and depressing relief.

“Well” Geoff said with his unrelenting good cheer. “Welcome home.”

**Tuesday**

The desks were just not arranged correctly. They were in an organised horseshoe now, not pressed higgledy piggledy into the edges of the room, trying to leave as much room as possible. Now they were all facing inward so everyone could see each other’s faces and not their screens or the backs of their heads.

Clearly everyone thought this was a huge improvement, especially judging by the way that Ray kept cheerfully pinging things at Jack, at whom he now had a completely clear shot. Jack was taking this in his usual stoical humor by completely ignoring him. Michael sat glumly at his desk, now nearest the door. Where  _Gavin_  should be sitting, he thought time and time again. But Gavin had his own little office now, two doors down.

“I’ll still be around Michael” he had assured him vaguely. “I’ll never be far away.” Michael had snapped back that he didn’t give a fuck  _where_ Gavin went, in fact the further away the better. He had instantly regretted it when Gavin’s face fell and he had stalked off in disgust.

“You alright, Michael?” Lindsay asked. Michael glanced up to the opposite corner where Lindsay was stationed and upon getting his attention, she pulled a silly face at him. The corners of his mouth twitched up reluctantly.

“You’ll get used to it” she promised and Michael hated how transparent he apparently was.

“Yeah” he agreed non-committaly, thinking longingly of his previous desk where he used to be so close to Gavin that their elbows would occasionally brush and Gavin would kick at his heels just to be irritating. He looked down at the blank wood of his new desk, unmarked and ungraffitied. He swiped a thumb over the same spot on his old desk that had been chipped. He remembered exactly how he got it too. Gavin had been sent sprawling by a particularly rough move from Jack, had fallen straight into Michael’s lap and they had both crashed to the floor, chair and all. The chair had smashed into the edge of the desk, leaving the chip. Michael had raged particularly hard at Gavin who had been too busy squeaking out pained laughs to be very worried about it.

He thought of Gavin’s desk, covered in various insulting messages, broken up by Adam without an ounce of thought or regret. There had been  _history_  in that desk and now it was no more than a heap of firewood.

“It doesn’t matter how hard you stare at your desk, your computer won’t set up itself” Jack prompted from Michael’s shoulder, almost kindly.   

“Worth a try” Michael muttered. But he got back to work.

**Wednesday**

Three left turns, straight on, through two doors and then one right turn? Or was it three rights and then the left? Michael span in wild circles for a moment. The hangar was a confusing maze of makeshift corridors. He only wanted an extension cord.

He swung around corner in time to spot JJ chasing Barbara down a corridor with his camera outstretched, shouting “RT recap, RT recap!”

“Fuck off!” was Barbara’s eloquent response and Michael laughed.

He hung another left to find Miles and Kerry in a fierce battle of wills over who got the slightly better looking wheelie chair.

“I’ll wrestle you for it!” Kerry announced.

“What? N-“ was all Miles managed to get out before Kerry let loose an alarming battle cry and leapt on top of him. They cashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs. At that moment Brandon appeared from his own room across the way.

“Oh nice chair” he said and promptly stole it, completely unwitnessed by the two men grappling on the floor.

Michael grinned again.

“Hey, Michael! Come and look at this!” Kara swept past him, tugging at his sleeve. He followed her into the hangar proper and his jaw dropped. A huge production stage had been set up. What had just been a mess of people and wires only two days previously was now a, well still a mess, but an organised mess. Desks had sprung up, grouped according to people’s role. Animators, technicians, editors and voice actors all happily sprawled across the vast space with only thin partitions separating them and which they were all cheerfully yelling over anyway. It should have been a horrifying clash of noises but the hangar was so huge that it suited the amount of bustle and movement and raised voices and the only affect was an exciting hubbub of activity.

“The fans are gonna love it!” Kara declared excitedly. “Pretty great, huh.”

“Yeah pretty great” Michael agreed. And for the first time he actually meant it.

Finally on the way back to his own office with a cord he had jacked from the animators he got unexpectedly pulled into Kerry’s and Miles’ fight that still seemed to be happening.

“…all your fault the chair is gone!” Kerry accused as Michael came back around the corner.

“ _My_ fault” Miles said incredulously.

“You took your eye off it.”

“I HAD A PERSON ON ME.”

“Michael” Kerry shouted, upon seeing him. “Settle a debate for us. “

“You’re both fucking idiots” Michael declared as walked past.

He heard a crash behind him and suspected that they had started fighting again. The grin returned to his face.

“Well someone’s looking more cheerful” Lindsay said as he returned to the office.

“Mmm” Michael agreed. After all the people out there, his friends, his co-workers, were the same rambunctious idiots they had always been. Now they just had more space to cause havoc in. His grin broadened. “I guess I am.”

**Thursday**

For the first time since starting work in the new building, Michael didn’t hang automatically to the left upon entering the room to get around Gavin’s desk (which was no longer there) which resulted him crashing into the shelf instead. Now he bee lined to his desk and dumped his stuff down and actually relished the way there was space to dump stuff now.

Seconds later Gavin came bounding into the room.

“It’s Let’s Play Day!” he yelled happily.

“Nearly every day is a Let’s Play Day” Jack pointed out drily.

"But it’s the first one in the new room, Jack" Ryan reminded him.

Gavin ignored them both. “Shove up, Ray” he ordered, proceeding to try and shoehorn his monitor into the tiny stretch of desk between Ray and Michael.

“Gavin what are you doing, idiot?” Geoff demanded. “Your space is there” he gestured to the corner between Ryan and Lindsay where there was more than enough desk space.

“But I always sit with Michael on my left” Gavin said, a distinct whine in his voice.

“That was before you got your own fucking office. Now sit down!” Geoff snapped.

Gavin pouted. Full on lip trembling, eyes glistening, how-can-you-say-such-terrible-things pouted. “But, Michael” he said, despite the fact that Michael had said nothing throughout.

“But Michael  _what_ , dumbass?” Michael asked. “That’s your spot.” He didn’t want to admit that over the past few days he had frequently glanced to his right to exchange a look with Gavin before he remembered that he wasn’t there anymore and would like nothing better for him to be back in his accustomed spot.

So Gavin scowled and flopped down into his allocated spot, casting fierce scowls at poor Lindsay and Ryan whose only crimes were not being Michael.

They lasted twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of Gavin’s sighs and sad squeaks. Twenty minutes of Gavin’s complete lack of engagement in the game except to wreak havoc on everyone else. Twenty minutes of shouting across the table to get Michael’s attention.

“That’s  _it_ ” Geoff announced suddenly, slamming his hand down. “Ray, please fucking swap with Gavin before I strangle him with my bare hands.”

Michael watched the swap take place in amused silence but once Gavin was settled at his side, he leaned in. “You are a ridiculous man-child and I can’t believe anyone ever thought it was a good idea to let you loose on your own.”

Gavin smiled the small, secret, warm smile that was Michael’s alone. “You missed me” he sing-songed. “And I promised you I would never be far away.”

As if to prove the point, he shuffled his monitor and mouse along the desk slightly and nudged his shoulder against Michael’s. “Team Nice Dynamite, right?” he chirped and Michael grinned fondly, unable to stop the warmth unfolding in his chest.

“Right!” he agreed and knocked his fist against Gavin’s waiting one.

**Friday**

“Day five in the new Rooster Teeth office” said an oddly accented voice in Michael’s ear. He was standing just outside the building, squaring up to go in. “And Michael is starting to realise that all is not as awful as he first thought.” The voice belonged to Gavin, Michael was sure of that. What he wasn’t sure of was why Gavin was speaking even more oddly than usual.

“What was that?”

“Geordie” Gavin said simply, slinging an arm around Michael’s shoulders. “Big Brother. Did you never see it?”

“Yeah but… I mean the narrator just had a normal voice.”

Gavin shrugged. “It’s a British thing” he said. A lot of things he said could easily be dismissed that way. “But I’m right, aren’t I? You had a right face on the first few days.”

“I don’t know what you mean” Michael sniffed, batting Gavin’s arm away. Gavin just grinned annoyingly, catching his swinging hand instead.

“It  _means_  you looked completely misera-“

“I  _know_  what it means” Michael snapped, glaring suspiciously down at their clasped hands. “What are you doing?”

“Oh please” Gavin said, squeezing his hand. “Don’t try to deny it. You’ve been miserable without me there. Lindsay told me.”

Michael made a mental note to kill Lindsay later. “I was  _sad_  because of the move” he insisted, shaking himself free. “That office has been my home for the past three years. And now I’m expected to start fresh somewhere else.”

“And what was it about it that you loved so much?” Gavin asked patiently.

“Well you know” Michael shrugged in his typically unforthcoming fashion. “We all had a laugh. And all our friends were there and we just got to hang out and play video games…”

“So what’s changed?” Gavin said.

Michael blinked at him. “What?”

“So what’s changed?” Gavin repeated. “We still get to hang out. We still get to have fun. We’re still surrounded by our friends, practically our  _family_  at this point. We still get to play games. But now we get to do it in an even bigger, better place where we can do even more exciting things.”

“I…” Michael couldn’t believe it was Gavin giving him this lecture. “That’s not the…”

“Of  _course_  it’s the point. That building was just a building. So is this one. And we still have all our memories. What’s important is that we’re all still together and we’re taking the next step in this adventure together. Those people in there are the ones that made the office home, not the building itself.”

“You’ve been talking to Burnie, haven’t you?” Michael accused him.

Gavin grinned. “You caught me. But he’s right you know.”

Michael was silent for a moment but he felt the huge knot that he had been carrying in his chest all week loosen. “So Lindsay sent you to give me a pep talk, huh?” he said eventually.

Gavin smiled. “Actually she said that I need to go and kiss and make up with my boyfriend because his constant bad temper was pissing off everyone else.”

Michael wasn’t sure where to start with that sentence because it was completely absurd anyway, and settled for saying. “We did make up. Yesterday.”

“Yes but you really were quite mean to me, Michael” Gavin said in a faux hurt voice. “I’m not sure I’m completely over-“

He squawked and leaped out the way as Michael grabbed at him. “You’re stupid” Michael said but couldn’t hide the warmth in his voice.

“You love me” Gavin announced gleefully.  “You’ve been so miserable because we’re not sharing a corner anymore.”

“We’re not even sharing an  _office_  anymore” Michael said bitterly without thinking. And suddenly Gavin was right up in his space again, eyes oddly intent.

“And I told you already that I’m not far away. You’ll barely get a chance to miss me.”

“Don’t miss you” Michael muttered childishly, half under his breath.

“Right” Gavin said disbelievingly. “Of course not.” And then he unexpectedly folded Michael into a hug. “It will be alright, boi” he muttered. “Nothing has to change.”

“Well” Michael said, his mouth suddenly dry. “Maybe things can change a little bit.”

He drew back slightly to look into Gavin’s face and then with a slight surge closed the distance between their lips. The kiss was soft and sweet and not awkward at all. In fact it felt like something they had been meaning to do for a long time but had never quite got around to. Michael felt Gavin’s grin before he saw it.

“Wipe that stupid look off your face” he grumbled as he released Gavin. But then he caught Gavin’s hand again and pulled him towards the office. And really, Gavin was right. It  _was_  just a building. And with his stupid British idiot by his side, it was  _home_.


End file.
